Ep 95: The Truth About Alcohol

Annie Grace, author of This Naked Mind and The Alcohol Experiment, dispels myths around alcohol with Andy and reveals her number one method for talking to teens about drinking.

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Full show notes 

Drinking alcohol is a significant part of Western culture. Of Americans over 18, 86.3% say that they’ve tried alcohol and 55.3% report that they drink regularly. Nowhere is alcohol more culturally expected than in young adulthood. It’s almost assumed that college students will experiment with alcohol, and teenagers are becoming more and more likely to try alcohol before reaching adulthood.

But it’s nothing to worry about, right? Alcohol isn’t that dangerous, is it? Unfortunately, the science says otherwise. In a recent federal report which rated the harmfulness of various drugs, alcohol was rated far and wide the most dangerous drug, with heroin coming in far behind in second and crack in third.

How is this possible? The study examined the widespread dangers of different drugs on society as a whole, looking at how many people face serious damage from using. Alcohol is by far the deadliest, killing approximately 88,000 Americans a year. All illegal drugs combined kill about 22,000 a year, while pharmaceuticals kill 24,000. If we combine these two numbers, we can see that the amount of deaths caused by all other drugs is only around half of those caused by alcohol.

And yet, most people are more informed about the various risks of taking Advil than they are about the dangers of alcohol! Our guest today, Annie Grace, is determined to change this. She’s the author of the book This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness and Change Your Life.

The book is all about how to stop alcoholism with one simple tool--education. Annie dives into her own individual journey in the episode: how she developed a drinking problem in her mid twenties, how she tried all the traditional avenues of fixing the issue to no avail until finally, she decided to find her own unique way to tackle her alcoholism.

She asked herself and many, many others every question she could think of concerning alcohol use in order to get to the bottom of why we drink so much in America and how to stop. Does alcohol really help you to relieve stress? Is it truly an effective way to combat social anxiety? When Annie really took the time to become educated on the topic she found that, in the long run, alcohol actually ends up hurting those who consume it much more than it helps. Most of the time, drinking worsened the very problems people were using alcohol to solve.

Armed with this knowledge, Annie no longer felt the need to drink. Instead of fighting alcoholism the traditional way, a way in which the journey is viewed as a torturous uphill battle, Annie simply looked at the pros and cons and decided that there were no good reasons to keep drinking. In fact, she found that not drinking was a much more positive experience, so she just stopped doing it one day and never looked back.

Positivity plays a big role in Annie’s approach to curbing alcoholic behavior. Annie talks about how rarely we acknowledge the power of positivity when it comes to changing our habits. Instead of focusing on everything you’re giving up when you give up drinking, think instead about what you’re gaining: long term health, peace of mind, and freedom from addiction.

Annie took these ideas and compiled them into a pdf, which she then put online, expecting only friends and family to read it. Instead, the pdf was downloaded over 20,000 times in two weeks. After months of requests from fans of the pdf, Annie self published a book which contains all her experiences and methods. The book experienced great popularity, and became subject to a bidding war between five major publishers. Along with publishing another book, she also has a podcast, a website (thealcoholexpirement.com), and has been featured in Forbes, the Chicago Tribune, and more. People everywhere have begun adopting Annie’s strategy as an alternative to traditional treatment.

That’s because traditional treatment has a lot of issues, many of which we discuss in the episode. There’s a lot of things we believe about alcohol which—-according to Anna--are serious misconceptions. One of the biggest ones Annie and I discuss is the illusion of a binary system of classification when it comes to diagnosing alcoholism. As a society, we tend to separate people into two categories: alcoholic and non-alcoholic. This labeling causes a lot more problems than it solves.

One of the main issues with this is that it dissuades people from getting help. People assume that only those with genetic or personality disorders have alcohol issues. This makes them more hesitant to seek treatment, as they don’t want to be one of “those” people, the people with the problems.

On the other hand, those who do end up being diagnosed with alcoholism and going into treatment are faced with an extremely intense amount of scrutiny over their habits They are expected to be entirely sober, to the point where one drink becomes a major source of anxiety and fear. This is because they are seen as chemically addicted individuals with genetic disorders. However, Annie informs us that 90% of those who drink excessively are not found to be chemically dependent on alcohol. Most of the problem is their mentality towards drinking which, with Annie’s methods, can be fixed.

So many of these misconceptions are fed by the media, something we may not even be noticing. Annie explains that a lot of the time, information about alcoholism in the media is misconstrued or exaggerated because people don’t actually want to believe that alcohol is dangerous. As we interact with the media, we don’t want to read or share things that make us question our preconceived ideas or opinions. We want things that align with what we already believe and confirm what we already think.

What this means is that if we’re a regular drinker, as many Americans are, an article that makes us question our reality too much or has something negative to say about drinking is not one we’re going to circulate among our friends and family. Instead, we’re more likely to click on an article that tells us that red wine is good for our heart, or that it helps us live longer. According to Annie, most of these articles use research that is taken out of context and misconstrued. We don’t want to be susceptible to this--and we don’t want our teens to be susceptible either.

As parents, how can we talk to our kids about alcohol to make sure they aren’t led in the wrong direction by these misconceptions? Annie dives into this in the episode. In short, she says the key is to use vulnerability. Talk to your kid honestly about your own experiences and mistakes you’ve made in the past. Basically--keep it real! If you fill your child’s head with antagonizing notions about drinking that are filled with hypocrisy, they’re not going to listen to you, nor are they going to keep you informed on their own drinking.

Additionally, you want to model the behavior you want to see your children exhibit. Your habits are very influential on the choices your children make. How much and how often you drink sets a precedent for your child’s drinking habits.

With all that being said, alcohol is a very nuanced topic. Have no fear, however, Annie is here to give h...